Page:Literary pilgrimages of a naturalist (IA literarypilgrima00packrich).pdf/68

 while just beside it, perhaps, the Habenaria psycodes gets its misty delicacy of purple bloom from the same source. With plants as with people it is not that on which we feed nor the spot on which we stand that counts in the final moulding of character. Some subtle essence, some fire of spirit within the orchid makes its bloom. Some grosser ideal within the milkweed matures in the dull, sticky umbels. Thus within the town, attending the same schools, and fed by the same butcher and baker, one boy grows up a poet and another a yokel. Even in the same family you may see it, for the milkweeds are not all alike. Along the dry hill-*sides the Asclepias tuberosa gives us bright orange flowers, exudes little if any stickiness, and even gets a better name from the botanist, being called the butterfly-weed.

But however gross and homely the milkweed blooms the butterflies find rich pasturage there and sip and cling till they fairly fall off in satiety. Winging to the milkweed out of the chestnut and maple shade of the deep wood comes Papilio turnus, striped tigerwise with rich yellow and black. Out of the long saw-edged grass that grows long